Review: THE LION KING is a Visually Beautiful Remake of The Original Animated Film
I was actually looking forward to seeing Jon Favreau’s updated remake of The Lion King. I was mostly interested in seeing how exactly the film would look with a photo realistic setting and CG animated animals. I have to say, the visuals in the film were absolutely stunning. This remake of The Lion King is seriously a beautiful looking film.
The thing is, this really is a shot-for-shot remake of the original animated film. It tells the exact same story and is filled with all the same songs that you love. When you see this movie, you are literally just watching the same film, but in a different animated style. There are a few differences and changes as well as some new dialogue, but it’s still the exact same story.
While the movie looked amazing, that came with some issues of its own. One of the things that makes the original film superior to this one is that the characters actually had facial expressions. You could see the emotion in the faces of the characters, which is an important aspect of the story. In this remake there are no facial expressions. It’s just animal faces talking.
So, while the characters looked incredible visually in their environment, you don’t get the emotional expressions which makes the voice acting and dialogue fall kind of flat. It I were to choose one of the two film versions to watch again, it would definitely be the original.
I will say, I took my 11-year-old kid to see the movie with me, and she absolutely loved it! It had been a long time since she had seen the animated film, and she just loves animals, so this movie absolutely blew her away. She laughed, she cried, she said it was one of her favorite movies of the year. So, obviously the kids are going to love it!
I’m going to give the film a 6 out of 10, but I asked my daughter what she would give it and she gave it a 10 out of 10. I did enjoy the movie, but other than the awesome visuals, this story is nothing new that we didn’t already see in the original film.
